"Then you can ease your minds, dolts that you all are," answered Owen in rasping tones. "The man is here, engaged with me, and will remain till--till the time comes for him to visit his prisoner. Go back to your post, and bid the man at the gate make ready to pass me out. I am going without the palace for a little while." He turned to watch the Mahratta salaaming, and then stared after his retreating figure, his heart palpitating, for discovery had been narrowly averted. When he was gone, he took the lamp again and inspected the door behind which the Frenchman was secured, and finding nothing there to disturb his mind, he slung the Colonel's sword to his belt, picked up his pistol, and drawing a silk scarf which happened to be in the room about his mouth went into the passage. Closing the door, he locked it, doing the same with the one which led into the garden. Then he tossed the keys into the bushes, flinging after them those which opened the door of the cell in which he had been quartered. "And now for the gate and freedom," he said. "If the fellow on duty dares to stop me----" He eased the sabre and strode on, the weapon clanking at his heels. And presently he was before the gates, to find three of the Mahrattas standing there, their pikes across their shoulders, while the gates stood wide open. Nodding curtly in acknowledgment of their salute, he passed into the street and turned in the direction opposite to that in which he knew his comrades to be quartered. Then he swung into the first side street, and again to the right, till he came to the back of the building in which Mulha had told him he would find his troopers. Lights were burning within, and some feet above his head there was an open window. Owen picked up a stone and threw it in, sending a second after it. A head suddenly appeared, there was a sharp cry, and within a couple of seconds a lithe and active form had slipped through the window, dropped to the ground, and was weeping and kneeling at his feet, grasping his ankles and legs as if begging life itself from the escaped prisoner. "Sahib, we have a ladder here. Mount and tell us all that has happened." The native officer, whose head and shoulders now protruded from the window, lowered a light and flimsy ladder made of sacking, and sternly bade Mulha leave the officer. "Silence!" he whispered hoarsely. "Would you that the sahib should now be taken when he has made good his escape? Silence!" "Steady, Mulha. I'm glad to see you. Now, up we go." In less than a minute he was standing on the floor of a loft, lit by a couple of smoky native lamps, and on which his twenty troopers had been reclining. Now, however, they stood about him exclaiming, giving vent to their joy. "To-morrow we were to have marched, and this night----" "I know the tale," said Owen, interrupting the native officer. "The orders are reversed. To-night we march. To-morrow--well, we may be killed. Are the horses saddled?"